Three Sisters

 

Today, the Three Sisters garden was created. It took a bit of raking and turning of soil to make sure I'd removed the bulk of what was growing there. My recent reading makes me feel a little badly about that, but there's just no room in a vegetable garden for other plants, save a few annuals to brighten the scene.

It was a beautiful day here on the Cape, warm, but certainly not hot. This particular patch of the overall garden is seperated from what I have previously gotten grass out of and bordered...so in this shot, it seems like a futile little garden patch in the middle of the wilderness, with tall growth all around. But before long, I'll have taken some control over the surrounding area: there are some bindweed vines curling their way toward the patch, so despite their pretty pink flowers, I'll have to be a little stern there, or I'll never get rid of them.

Because I was not able to find pole bean seeds, I had to settle for green bean seedlings, which are a little further along than the corn. For them I built the trellace seen in the back of the photo, a simple construction of miscellaneous lumber and some green fencing. The path is made of oyster and clam shells, and the plantings on either side are corn and both zucchini and yellow squash, as well as one vine of miniature pumpkins. It's always fun to watch those vines twist and turn their way through the beds...

Also managed to get one more of the soon-to-be flopping over tomato plants into the ground. The rest will have to wait another day or so, until I can prepare their beds. How nice it will be to have them all safely in the ground, so I can leave them be a bit without worrying, and turn my attention to the many irises which need to be dug up and divided, in hopes of coaxing some bloom from them in 2006.

Postscript: Right after taking this photo, I heard some footfalls in the woods, not an unusual sound...most often its a pair of amorous squirrels chasing one another. In this particular event, however, I was able to spot a large gray coyote moving through the trees...fortunately not in my direction. Still, it was a clear sign that another day in the garden had drawn to a close.